


Of Monsters and Men

by CrankWindPencil



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Just some speculation on Time Lord religion, Rory cares a lot about the Doctor, trigger warning:self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-02-28 17:01:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2740145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrankWindPencil/pseuds/CrankWindPencil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not often that Rory hears the Doctor pray.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Monsters and Men

It's been hours of tossing and turning and endless onslaughts of unwanted memories, and finally, _finally_ , Rory Williams accepts the fact that sleep is not going to afflict him any time soon, and he rolls out of bed, carefully, as to avoid waking Amy, and wanders out of the room, into the TARDIS hallways. Usually, sleep comes easily, but some night, like tonight, all he can seem to think about is the two thousand years that he spent as a Roman, and on those nights, he knows he won't be sleeping.

So Rory walked the always well lit hallways, noting the eerie silence that occupied them, and hoped, only half consciously, that he would end up in the console room, if only for the company of the Doctor, who never seemed to slow down or require sleep. The nurse smiled slightly, wondering exactly what it was that the Time Lord did in absence of sleep. What occupied him in the early hours of the morning, while the rest of the world was quiet?

Still on this subject (Amy had mentioned something about parties once, hadn't she?), Rory stepped through a hallway and was appropriately startled when he found himself in the console room. He hadn't thought he'd been that close the the room. Of course, if the TARDIS was sentient, as the Doctor kept insisting it was, then there was every possibility that his journey had been helped along by the machine.

Dismissing the thought, Rory entered the console room, starting around the controls in search of the Time Lord. He circled the entire console, coming back to where he'd begun, and then stopped, listening closely for his friend. After just a moment, he was rewarded with the sound of the other man's voice, though his words were mumbled enough that Rory couldn't make out what was being said. He can tell that the voice is coming from beneath the glass floor, and starts his descent down the stairs to the lower level of the room, still smiling as he sees the Time Lord, clad, as always, in his black slacks and tweed jacket, lanky body leaned against the center column amidst the tangle of wires that occupied most of the space.

The smile promptly slides off Rory's features when the Doctor's words become clear enough for him to understand.

"-please, I just want to be forgiven, and I know that I don't deserve it, but please, I'm not good enough, I can't do this-"

A sob escapes the Doctor and Rory's blood runs cold. What the hell had he walked in on? His attention returns to the Doctor when he continues to speak, voice cracking and breaking all the while.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, all I want to do is keep them safe, and I can't do that, I swear, I'm trying, but I can't-"

Rory watches the Time Lord, scrutinizing him; noting the way his eyes are screwed shut, how his hands are clenched, the tremors that wrack his entire body.

And quite suddenly Rory decides that the Doctor has suffered through more than his fair share of self-inflicted hell.

"Doctor?"

The Time Lord's eyes snap open, and in one movement, almost too quick for Rory to see, he stands up, drawing himself to his full height, facing the nurse. His features are stony and impassive, carefully calculated, Rory thinks.

Half a moment of silence passes before the Doctor breaks it, his voicing filling the air, and it's surprisingly level, a far cry from the sobbing mess of a man Rory had watched only moments ago.

"What are you doing up, Rory? It must be nearly three in the morning, you should be asleep-"

"Doctor." Rory interrupted, and the Doctor falls silent. "What the...hell did I just see?"

For a second, Rory thinks he sees the Doctor's nearly perfect mask of infallibility crack for the first time, but then it's whole again and Rory can't quite decide if it was his imagination or not.

"Language, Rory." The Doctor chastised. "Watch-"

"Doctor."

This time, the facade really does fall, and the Time Lord is taken aback, hesitating before he speaks.

"It was nothing." Is what he eventually settles on, and for all his practice with it, when it comes right down to it, the man can't lie for anything, let alone half as well as Rory thinks that he should be able to. Evidently the Doctor catches the skeptical expression scrawled across Rory's features, and he attempts to back of his claim with words of false assurance.

"Honestly, it''s not important. Don't get yourself worried over it."

Rory is about to point out that the Doctor was shaking and crying and talking to himself only a minute ago-

Wait.

"Were- were you praying?" The nurse asks, voice laden with disbelief. At Rory's question, the Doctor looks increasingly uncomfortable and he shifts his weight between his feet.

"Well, were you?"

"What bloody difference does it make to you?!" The Time Lord snaps, the anger that Rory knew would follow once false assurances and cheap words failed him surfacing. The anger was hot and flashy, like a teenager's, meant to distract rather than to truly hurt.

Needless to say, it doesn't work on Rory Williams.

"I'm just curious is all." He replies, keeping infuriatingly calm. The Doctor glances Rory up and down, sizing him up, determining whether or not he can trust the other man.

"...Yeah." He eventually admits, after what feels like to both men a very long time.

Rory is, in some ways, over two thousand years old, and in that respect is a touch different from your typical human, and therefore he doesn't do that typical human thing where he asks loads of stupid questions like 'who to?', or 'what religion is that?'. Instead, his eyebrows knit together and he jumps straight to the heart of the matter.

"Why?"

The Doctor, predictably enough, waves a hand very slightly, seemingly dismissing the matter.

"Doesn't really matter." He says, appearing as though he was entirely uninterested in the subject. Rory blinks, vaguely aware that, perhaps this time around, it would be best for the both of them if he were to let the Time Lord keep his silence. He flashes a smile.

"Of course. Would you do me a favor though?"

"What is it?"

"Just- try and get some sleep tonight, would you?" The nurse requests, glancing the Time Lord up and down. The Doctor gives a small nod.

"That would probably do me some good." He admits.

"Probably." Rory agrees.

Pause.

"I'm off then." Rory started, turning towards the stairs and starting up them.

"Goodnight, Rory." The Doctor calls.

"G'night, Doctor."

And though the Doctor had agreed to get some sleep, Rory can't quite shake the feeling that he would completely disregard his promise, much in the same way that he can't quite rid himself of the vision of the Time Lord, cold and alone and shaking and praying.

**~oOo~**

Rory only lets it get past that point once.

**~oOo~**

It is four thirty-seven in the morning, and Rory Williams is furious. He's furious at himself, and he's furious at the universe, but mostly he's furious at the Doctor and everything the man has ever said or done or touched.

He feels as though this is not entirely unjustified.

In fact, when he thinks of Amy, of the bruises an lacerations that marl her body; the unfortunate result of their misadventure that day, when he thinks of the supposedly infallible Time Lord and how he was unable to prevent harm from coming to Amy, he knows that it is, in fact, perfectly justified. That the alien deserves every bit of hate that Rory is channeling in his direction.

So he stalks the TARDIS hallways, chasing circles of logic that always lead him back to the same place, setting his thoughts in motion once more, keeping him irritated and generally pissed off. Needless to say, he isn't particularly pleased when he turns a corner and inexplicably finds himself in the console room.

He swears under his breath and stops walking, listening for any sign of the Doctor.

He hears it and swears again, not so quietly this time around, but certainly not loud enough for the Time Lord to actually hear him.

Especially not over his own, panicked mutterings, voice cracking and breaking like ancient pottery.

"-couldn't, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry that I couldn't stop it, that I wasn't good enough, that I haven't taken them back, but I can't, please-"

The voice dissolves into another language, one that Rory's never heard before and has no hope of translating.

Rory remembers, in striking detail, the first time he'd found the Doctor like this, only a few weeks ago. He remembers what he heard, remembers what he saw, and he remembers the almost conversation they'd had.

He also remembers that he'd actually given a damn about what happened to the other man on that night.

So Rory turns around, and promptly walks back into the hallway from which he'd come, leaving the Time Lord to himself and his thoughts.

As he walks away from the console room, he does the best he can to convince himself that the noise echoing behind him is not a scream.

**~oOo~**

The Next Day

The Doctor, Rory decides, is an exceptional actor. He's back in the console room with Amy, who says that she feels much better than she had the day before, and the Time Lord himself, who seems to be fine.

"I swear, I feel great!" Says Amy, circling around the controls. The Doctor flashes a worried look to Rory before glancing back to Amy.

"You're absolutely sure?" He asks. Amy sighs loudly.

"Of course I'm sure, raggedy man." She says, an edge of exasperation in her voice. The Doctor turns to face Rory.

"And you feel fine?" He questions, scanning the nurse up and down with such intense care that Rory actually feels a twinge of guilt for his actions the night before. He quickly shakes it off, answering the question.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

There's a half a second of hesitation before a smile lights up the Doctor's features and Rory is struck by the realization that the Time Lord's fake smiles look exactly like his real ones.

Either that or all of his smiles are fake.

The man had been an utter mess no more than seven hours ago. No way had he recovered back to his usual self in so little time.

Rory becomes acutely aware that the subject he is treading on is one he doesn't want to ponder for so long, lest he actually figure something out about how the Doctor's mind worked; something he has no desire whatsoever to know anything about.

"Alright then," The Doctor says, and Rory is torn from his train of thought. "We'll go somewhere, nice, peaceful..." He trails off. "The Seventh Moon of Calypsus!" He exclaims suddenly, with such abandon that Amy flinches. The Time Lord starts around the console, pulling lever and adjusting dials at speeds that probably shouldn't have been anatomically possible, but, as per usual, everyone ignores that, opting instead to focus on the way that the TARDIS was jerking around as it bounced through the Time Vortex.

It's no more than thirty seconds later when the ship lands with a solid thud and the Doctor quite literally bounced from the controls over to the doors, throwing them open to reveal a vast landscape of plush red grass and matte silver trees, standing noble as a soft breeze blew by and into the sky, orange, with soft pink undertones near the far off horizon.

Amy joins his side and steps out onto the planet, leaving Rory to stand by the Doctor's side, stiff and awkward and noticing exactly how unstiff and awkward the other man is.

Anger kindles anew in Rory's chest.

It's as if the bastard has already forgotten what he let happen the day before.

Rory starts out of the TARDIS abruptly, brushing shoulders with the Doctor as he steps onto the soft grass, sinking slightly into it, walking away. Behind him, the Doctor quickly closes the door and locks it, scrambling towards his companions. The trio walks in silence for a moment until the Doctor speaks up.

"The Seventh Moon of Calypsus," He begins. "Currently undiscovered and mostly uninhabited. That happens in just a few years though, and it becomes a bit of a side stop for tourists..."

**~oOo~**

"...I really am sorry about what happened yesterday."

Rory's head snaps up from where it had been sunken upon his chest, and he turns his attention to the Time Lord who is staring into the distance, watching the small figure that was Amy as she walked through the fields of red.

"I never meant for anything to happen." He says, voice soft.

"Yeah, well, you never mean for anything to happen, do you?" Rory asks, sarcasm saturating his voice. A look of hurt flashes across the Doctor's features.

"No...I don't..." The other man mutters. "I do try and make up for it, though..." He says, to himself more than anyone else, it seems. Consciously or not, he wrings his left wrist gently, expression blank. Despite himself, Rory's eyebrows knit together, watching the Time Lord's actions.

"What's that for, then?" He asks, motioning to the Doctor's wrist.

"Hmm? Oh, this," The Doctor acknowledged, noting what Rory was referring to. "Nothing. It's nothing."

Even as the Doctor dismisses it, and even as Rory tries to convince himself that he really doesn't care, he can't help the worry that is welling in his chest.

"Doctor," He starts. "Can I see your wrist?"

The Time Lord blinks.

"...Why?" He questions.

"Just...I won't tell Amy anything, no matter what it is."

The Doctor meets Rory's gaze, confused and kind and so, so old.

"...You've already figured it out, haven't you?" He asks softly.

"I can't be sure until you show me, can I?" Rory counters, voice quiet. The Doctor swallows and his entire body tenses as he lays his left arm before him and pulls the sleeve up in one swift movement, no time for hesitation or second thoughts.

Rory's jaw clenches when he's presented with the sight of the Doctor's bare forearm, and his stomach turns. Several perfectly parallel cuts mar his wrist. There aren't too many and they aren't too deep, but God knows they're more than enough to scare the living hell out of Rory.

"...Why-" He breaks off, attempts to recompose himself, and continues. "...Why the hell would you do this?" He asks, voice very carefully controlled. The Doctor mumbles something that Rory can't quite make out.

"What?"

"Repentance." The Time Lord muttered.

"The hell are you on about?"

At the moment, Rory is trying to match up the Doctor; the man who wears bowties and rants about Jammy Dodgers and seems to feed off of bad jokes, with a man who would do this to himself.

He finds it distressingly easy and is beyond thankful when the Doctor's voice cuts through his thoughts.

"Last night, you were probably asleep, but-" The Time Lord's surprisingly smooth words come to a halt. "Amy." He says. "What happened yesterday shouldn't have happened. It was my fault."

And Rory's breath hitches.

"Last night?" He questions, and he feels like he's about to throw up.

The Time Lord nods, vaguely confused.

"Oh my God." Rory says, standing up from the ground. He laughs, a hollow noise with no real humor behind it, because, Jesus, he could have stopped this from ever happening. When he'd stumbled across the Doctor last night, head him praying and sobbing and begging for forgiveness. He could have intervened, prevented his own self destruction.

"Rory?" The Doctor's voice is carefully inquisitive and he's watching Rory carefully. Rory turns to face him.

"Jesus Christ, I- I'm sorry..." He muttered. Sorry that he hadn't talked to the Doctor last night, sorry that he had ever let the Time Lord get past the stage of a cracked voice and tears, sorry that he had ever allowed him to dissolve into screams and hate and blood.

"What for?"

Rory shakes his head slightly.

"Nothing...It's- nothing."

The Doctor arches a quizzical eyebrow but doesn't press the matter.

"Next time, come and find me before you start carving yourself up, okay?" Says Rory. "Please."

The Doctor gives a silent nod, watching the ground beneath his feet.

"Have you done this before?" Asks Rory, suddenly curious.

Pause.

"Not hardly in this regeneration." The Doctor answers, voice soft. "But in my last two bodies, especially my tenth, yeah. It got pretty bad."

"How bad?"

The Time Lord turned his gaze from the ground to Rory, locking eyes.

_"Don't."_ He warns, and there's something in his answer that makes a chill run down Rory's spine. It kills his curiosity and he doesn't press the matter further.

Instead, he takes a step closer to the Doctor, placing a hand on his shoulder.

'You can talk to me, Doctor. Anytime. And Amy. The woman loves you to death, I swear. She'll always be- we'll always be there for you. If you need anything. Okay?"

Silence.

"Doctor," Starts Rory, voice hard as steel. "Are we understood?"

The Time Lord nods slightly.

"Yeah," He agrees. "We're understood."

"Good."

"Moving on, though," The Doctor begins, inhaling sharply. "I think it would be best if we went and caught up to Amy before she wanders off too far, don't you?"

"Probably." Agrees Rory as the Doctor stands up and brushes himself off.

"Honestly though," Says the Doctor as they start across the fields of red. "Rule one; Don't wander off! But does that stop anyone? No!"

"Well, maybe you could make it a bit more specific than just 'don't wander off'." Suggests Rory.

"What does that mean? Give them a perimeter to stay within? 'Don't wander off any further than twenty yards'?"

"Maybe..."

**~oOo~**

_Three Weeks Later_

"So what exactly is your religion?"

It is two fifty-three in the morning and Rory is doing the best he can to navigate a nine hundred year old alien back into the realm of calm and reason. The alien in question is leaned against the central column underneath the TARDIS console, chest still heaving though Rory found him over ten minutes ago.

"K'dsvair."

The answer comes quickly and confidently, without hesitation. It's quite the contrast from the man from whom it's spoken.

"I'm sorry?" Asks Rory. It certainly isn't any religion he's ever heard of.

"K'dsvair." The Doctor repeats, eyes still screwed shut. "Time Lord religion. Well, one of them."

"What were the others?"

"Rory. If I asked you to name every religion on earth, would you be able to do it?"

"I, well...no." Rory admits.

"Exactly. Given that Gallifrey had a population three times that of the earth's, I don't know every religion."

The Time Lord falls silent and Rory watches him.

"I never thought-" Rory starts, then breaks off. The Doctor glanced up.

"Never thought what?" He asks. Rory hesitates a moment.

"It's just, I thought your planet was all about science and I couldn't see where religion would fit into that."

Pause.

"...Everybody needs to have faith in...something, Rory. It might be a person or a book or a God, but it needs to be there. Without faith we're just...lost. We're hopeless. There's no point." The Doctor is quiet, looking Rory up and down. "What do you believe, Rory?" He questions softly.

"I'm not religious." Rory answers.

"That doesn't matter." The Doctor says, shaking his head slightly. 'Even if you're not religious, you have to believe in something." He gives Rory a critical stare. "How about you, Rory Williams?"

Rory blinks.

"I- I don't know." He stammers out.

The Time Lord stood up from where he sat, and though his hands are shaking, the rest of him remains steady as he begins towards the stairs that will lead him from the console room.

"Maybe you should figure it out." He calls.

Rory Williams does not twitch for the next two minutes.

**~oOo~**

"I figured it out."

"Hmm?"

The Doctor turns from the console to face Rory, who's leaning on the ship's guard rails.

"I said that I figured it out."

"Yeah, I heard that bit. Figured out what?"

Rory hesitates, slightly taken aback.

"Ah, what- what it is that I believe in." He says, watching the Doctor for his reaction. Other than the arching of an eyebrow, there's a noticeable lack of it.

"Well? What is it?"

Pause.

"Amy. I think. I'm pretty sure. It seems like-" The nurse is cut off by a wave of the Doctor's hand.

"You don't need to think a out these things, Rory. " He says softly. Rory nods.

"Amy. It's Amy." He confirms, more confident this time around. The two men are silent for a moment.

"Good. That's good." The Doctor eventually says. "...Funny thing about K'dsvair, though; it was a bit abstract. There really was no one thing we believed in."

"So what about you?" Rory questions, curious.

Rory barely finishes his sentence before the Doctor answers.

"You." He says shortly. "You, Amy, Donna, Tegan, Rose, Adric, Zoe, Harry, Martha. All of you."

Rory is silent.

"We- we're that important to you?"

A flash of something -it looks like disappointment- crosses the Doctor's features.

'Of course you're that important to me." He mutters. "You- my friends, are the single most important thing in the universe to me." Pause. "I thought I had made that quite clear."

And Rory remembers every time that the Doctor had sacrificed himself for he and Amy. He remembers every kind word the man has ever spoken. He remembers every situation where he's protected Amy by putting himself in danger. He remembers the times when Amy was crying and he has no idea what to do and the Doctor steps in and cracks a joke and soon enough the three of them are grinning like idiots.

"No...you've made that perfectly clear, actually. Sorry. That was a daft question."

The Doctor chuckles.

"Good."

He turns away from Rory to face the console.

"And I think that Amy believes in you." Rory says after a quick moment. The Time Lord freezes, his back still to Rory.

"Amy..." The Doctor trails off, then continues. "Amy believes in a madman in a blue box with two hearts and a time machine. She believes in someone who is...who is so kind. She believes in someone who helps, who gives and gives until they have nothing left. She believes in an alien who is hundreds of years old, who has seen plenty of death and destruction, who has caused more of it than anyone can ever know, and yet still cares. She believes in a fairytale, Rory. _She believes in someone who can never exist."_

"Exactly," Says Rory, voice just barely above a whisper. He continues, because in this moment it is important, so very important, that the Doctor understand this one thing.

_"She believes in you."_

The Doctor's breath hitches for just a moment and he very carefully lets it out. He tries to say something, but he's not entirely sure what and the words get stuck in his throat anyways.

So he keeps quiet.

Rory, on the other hand, has no such obligation.

'Have you got that, Doctor?"

Silence.

"Please. Are we good?"

Rory's words finally register and the Doctor nods.

"Yeah. We're good.

A smirk tugs on Rory's lips.

"Good." He says, satisfied.

There is a short silence before the Doctor starts, rather suddenly, around the TARDIS console, flipping switches and adjusting dials in a seemingly patternless order.

"Now, I was thinking that we could head off to the planet Yossarian for the day. Lovely place." He says. Rory blinks.

"Isn't Yossarian a character from a book?" He questions, deeply confused.

The Doctor rolls his eyes.

'Why can't it be both?"

Rory can't really come up with a good answer to that, so the Doctor throws down a final lever and then takes a step away from the controls. He grabs onto a guard rail as the TARDIS begins shaking and jerking, taking them to wherever the hell it was that the planet Yossarian was.

"Geronimo!"

**Author's Note:**

> Whoever can tell me what book Yossarian is from gets unlimited cassette tapes and possibly gets to give me a promt that I'll write a story for. Anywho, thanks for reading, have a fantastic day, and DFTBA!


End file.
